Tagged: marketing

February 16, 2011

Updated: Why I vent

About Social Media “Experts.”

Late at night I tend to vent about social media “experts” or social media “marketers” that don’t get it. I take it personal, because I tend to get grouped in with those that give us a bad name.

First of all, social media is a place to bring your brand alive. To engage and converse. Not to spam! So when I see so many small businesses going after the quick “for $200 a month we can get you 5000 Twitter fans” strategy, it pains me. People are making money off of this!

Case in point, a new agency in Phoenix has launched to help small business with their social media.. This firm went after Twitter users that have large networks to help sell and fulfill their social media products/services. Being in the space myself, I am hyper vigilant of who is doing what in this space. Mainly because I believe in this space so much that I love to see people doing new things, engaging new ways, building businesses off of great micro communities. I love LOVE giving shout outs to business who rock this space. I do it all the time. I try hard to NOT call out those who do it wrong by name even though I feel they hurt this space so much.

Today I got a message from the CEO/President of this new firm asking me to “like” a new page of theirs. Really? Really? #facepalm.

Because I value this space so much, I need to break the rules this once and call a spade a spade. This did in fact happen!

I am sorry… but that is just painful. If you are outsourcing your social media to someone who does THIS to your brand/small business/company, please be warned. You are wasting your money. This “social media expert” who leads other “experts” doesn’t even know how to send an invite! IM Spam? Really?!?!

Please take value in your voice. Please take value in the community you build around your brand. Do not just comb the web and spam others. This type of engagement and “like” is not marketing. It does MORE damage than good.

Accounts on the social web are people. Talk to them as such. Not these simple, “Hi, I don’t know you… can you endorse my business” tactics!

This is why I rant.

</end rant>

Update:

He just did it again this morning! He is spamming so many people that he is forgetting the conversations he has. This time I am not holding back on the name. He is the CEO of PTS Social Media.

Another update (and to be fair):

They reached out to me in an email. I felt they need a public rebuttal because I called them out here. I commend them for that, but have a few issues still:

Dear Kevin,

I had a chance to read your blog and Twitter post in relations to what occurred on February 16th and 17th. I felt inclined to respond not for argumentative sakes, but rather address some of this issues you outlined so clearly in your blog post “Why I Vent.” I do not know why you believe I have given you a bad name. I, Andrew Shainker, who was the writer behind Doug Greenwald on those specific dates never once claimed to be an “expert” in social media. I am sorry that you have gotten that impression. I believe by asking someone to like a page is a choice that I rightfully have. You as the receiver can either decline or accept that request. In addition, you also have the option to ask me to like your page. Social media is not just a one way street.

The company, I work for prides itself on getting results for our clients. We have more than 60 businesses we represent with a staff of more than 10 people. Our cost are way more than $200 a month and there is no “Twitter Fan guarantee” in any of our contracts. Those statements you outlined in your blog were false. I believe it is about creating a loyal following rather than just a large following.

I am glad that you have knowledge in the field of social media. I am fond believer though that there is no right or wrong way to do social media. It is my professional opinion that only through trial and error one can determine what truly works. There are no degrees to become a social media expert. The way you use social media might be different for each and every person. I value your opinion, but in the future I hope that if you have an issue or a concern you will call the person, not just de-friend them on Facebook.

Working at a premier web based marketing company we run into “one man” shows all across the valley. I believe that these individuals do not have the overhead, the staff, or truly the time to do social media correctly for multiple clients. As you know social media can be a full time job. It might not be brain surgery, but it is time consuming. I hope that when representing your clients you spend your time on there accounts rather then picking a part whats wrong with ours.

If you would like I would be happy to answer any of your questions or concerns. Please call my personal cell at any time. Thank-you for taking time out of your day to read this,and I hope to hear from you soon.

–
Andrew J. Shainker
Business Development Manager
PTS Social Media

First off, really am thankful they responded. He is right, social is a two way street. A public two way street. I make this argument public because this is not just about one person having an issue with how one company is doing things. It is about this space as a whole. I did not say the firm charges $200 for 5k Twitter followers. I say some do. So I want to clarify that. In this case, I get a blind “Like” request from someone managing a person account of another person that both I don’t have a relationship with. If you were in a cocktail party, would you walk up to a stranger and ask them a blind favor to “LIKE” or endorse a brand? Sure it is your right to do so. This is correct. But it still not ethical. And I will most likely tell others at the party what just happened because it was simply, rude.

That is what happened here. But the party is the social web. I told the social web what just happened. Then, it happened again the next day. So names became involved. Just like everything social… when someone is rude and unethical, word of mouth spreads. Yes you did reach out to me. Should I have called you directly? It is my right in social media to post the above because I am very prideful of those that build epic in this space. So for Andrew, speaking on behalf of another persona, to engage me on social media and be rude a second time got me more upset. This is not just about him, his actions but what MANY do. If celebrities and CEO’s of multi-billion dollar companies can manage their social feed, why can’t a local firm do the same. Why must random invites as IM spam be a tactic they have to defend?

What are your thoughts as a consumer of social media. Yes he has a right to do this, but is it effective? What does it do to this space?

How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] (fredzimny.wordpress.com)
11 Keys to Social Media Marketing Success (blogs.constantcontact.com)
How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
Social Media and your brand – it’s all about how you play the game (socialmediatoday.com)
A Social Media Tip for Small Businesses (famousbloggers.net)
Social Media Management Tips (ducttapemarketing.com)

November 4, 2010

Social CRM Tagging

I wrote last week my plans to use Marketo as a Social CRM tool. My first step was to set up a tagging process within Marketo to track visitors that come to any of our landing pages, microsites, or main site.

I have set up a campaign called Social CRM within Salesforce and have set up a Marketing Activity within Marketo to earmark all visitors who have come to any of our sites or landing pages through a social network or our blogs:

I then set a flow to associate these leads into a SFDC campaign. I set up behavioral scoring to track their engagement on out site. I will soon implement demographic scoring as well. Bear in mind this is for leads we have information on. If a visitor comes to our site and does not have a pre-existing record within our Salesfroce or have not filled out a form, we will not have contact information for the lead and it will appear as Anonymous:

The goal is to engage enough within the social web to convert a relationship to a SFDC/Marketo lead. Once I capture the information, I can begin to track the interaction on our microsites, blogs and our own site. I can associate the social relationship with their activity on our forward facing digital spaces. I can understand more from the customer and what they are looking for. The opportunity to provide relevant content to them and strengthen the social relationship online is greatly enhanced. I can track the relationship within the social space using tools like Gist or Sprinklr and the interaction with the lead on our pages using the system above.

This is just the first step obviously. There is much more strategy to come. However the ability to track conversions and relevance on our sites from our social web engagement is at least built.

How are you tracking your conversions from the social web? What tools/process are you using?

What Is Social CRM? (socialmediaexaminer.com)
“The” CRM And “The” Mentality Behind It (customerthink.com)
What the heck’s a “Lead” anyway? (customerthink.com)
Difference between Social CRM and traditional CRM (customerthink.com)
Analytics Is the Social CRM Secret Sauce (enterpriseirregulars.com)

August 6, 2009

SPAM-A-LOT: It's going to get worse…

… before it gets better. We are talking about social spam on Twitter. Other social networks suffer from this problem as well, however recent changes to Twitter this last month has made the issue worse. We feel the worst is yet to come.

This last month, Twitter launched its new front page / logon screen. This gave us insight into their revenue model, which includes trending data and analytics. Many companies understand that their brands need to be in this space, but they don’t understand how to use social networks.

The proven models are about volume and numbers, not about engagement or advocacy on the social web. Therefore are many semantic bots that have been created and are now spaming the Twitterverse with hashtags and links. Volume, not authenticity, is the focus.

Businesses understand Pay-Per-Clicks and numbers more than they understand brand equity, authentic fellowship and brand advocates on the social web. We at Activating Word of Mouth use a metric that measures a brand’s Social Web Impact. This measures how influential your following is and how authentic.

The reality is, that brands still focus on volume and not engagement. Thus, new strategies like pay-per-tweet and celebrity endorsements are moving forward. This type of marketing will inevitably trend high on the twitter feeds and consequently land on the front page.

Is this good? Continue reading →

July 20, 2009

Advertisers Kill Tradition

Tonight in a Tweet, I realized how true this statement really is; advertisers who approach the social web as a communication vehicle, kill cultural norms within a given space. Case in point…Twitter. Twitter is not just a vehicle to communicate. It is not a tool. It is a culture.

Here at Activating Word of Mouth we focus on authentic word of mouth. This begins with relationships, not spam. We take the advertising out of marketing. Other marketing firms approach social networks as a new vehicle to get their products/services out in volume. They are about noise. Last night I noticed a new trending topic “Chris Brown.” My first thought was, did I miss the news? Did he do something to Rhianna again? I clicked on the search for “Chris Brown” in Twitter and saw this: Continue reading →

July 7, 2009

In Order to Succeed You Must Get Out of the Bubble

Many businesses look to other businesses in their market and/or geographic area for ideas. In social media we find this is a double edged sword. We recently wrote about the Perils and Rewards of Being First in the market. This was in response to many conversations with prospective clients wanting to understand more about social media but not really wanting to make that dive into resourcing out part of their marketing budget toward Word of Mouth marketing on the social web.

We at ActivatingWOM have been traveling a lot. We are still amazed that geographic markets drive the decision to jump into the social web. When we are talking to clients in the Bay area, where social media applications, networks, etc are born every day, the dialogue is about new analytics and how to maximize new networks before the main stream takes advantage of these tools. In LA it is about how to define your social presence as it relates to fans of various talents and how engagement is measured. In DC it is about identifying policy trends in conversations and identify influencers of various policy discussions.

In Arizona, people are will watching and learning. Few companies are willing to jump out of their bubble and take the social media plunge. Even the various markets mentioned above are still in a bubble. They rarely look at how practices in these various markets can help with their web presence.

I come from an extensive political background. I saw the “bubble effect” often. In various campaigns you tend to surround yourself with like minded individuals who further strengthen your ideals but tend to disconnect you with others outside your bubble. I often challenged organizations and candidates to get out of their bubble. Washington tends to be so deep in the beltway bubble that they hire pollsters after pollsters to get the pulse of the American public.

On the social web, everything is available. Case study after case study is available. What relevance does it have to your industry? No one else in your industry is really resourcing out this work you say? It is time to get out of your bubble. In a previous post we demonstrated various companies’ success on the social web.

If you are a company that has never used Twitter or often laugh at discussions around social media, I have a test for you. Go to http://search.twitter.com and type in a few words related to your product and or services. I guarantee you that there are conversations happening around your services and or products. From Tea to Athletes we manage a wide range of clients who at one time thought the social web was not for them. This simple tests showcases that there are potential customers and/or fans out there. If they are already talking about you, why are you not engaging?

It is time to get out of the bubble, and make the jump. Don’t let bubble vision keep you from success.

July 2, 2009

Viralocity Friend or Foe

You can trend your brand on Twitter fairly easy. But with that comes accountability. Two latest campaigns have showcased this well.

Brands on Twitter follow “hashtags” and topics that are trended in an attempt to be apart of the Tweeting action. Hashtags are # signs combined with terms that denote a conversation. Example, conferences use #BWE09 or #140conf to tag conversations about their conferences. #BWE09 = BlogWorld 2009 in Las Vegas and #140conf = the 140 Conference in New York City.

Hashtags create a vehicle to track and trend conversations about specific subjects. When the Iran Election protest blew up on twitter a hashtag became a trend using #iranelections. Brands use hastags for their own campaigns. Recently two similar companies (one US based the other UK based) have created and trended their own hashtags. One was a big fail in the Twitter universe and the other has hit in the community to the pont that the viral buzz around it has caught the eyes of main stream media.

These two campaigns are focused around website development companies SquareSpace and MoonFruit.

SquareSpace and Moonfruit are “turn key” web development platforms for any type of user who wants to create a web presence. From the pro-webdeveloper to the novice, both these companies offer tools and packages to help build your website.

A few weeks back SquareSpace launched a campaign where they offered 30 new iPhones to 30 twitter users within a one month period. The only catch was that the Twitter user must use the hashtag #squarespace in their tweets. Our good friends over at Mashable wrote about the campaign here: http://mashable.com/2009/06/10/iphone-squarespace/

The issue, as Mashable points out, was the “fine print.”

However, there is one issue with this campaign: they aren’t really giving away a free iPhone. If you visit the site for the promotion, you’ll note that down the page, in light grey text, that the prize is actually a “$199 gift certificate to the Apple store, which may be used toward the purchase of an 8GB iPhone.”

Why is this a big deal? Because the only way to get an iPhone for $199 is if you also sign up for new service with AT&T. Otherwise, your $199 gift card will go towards the purchase of an iPhone at full retail price, which can run as high as $699 for existing AT&T customers, as we reported yesterday.

From Apple’s iPhone page: “For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).”

In other words, if Squarespace were actually giving away iPhones, they’d be laying out a total of at least $15,000 for the 30-day campaign, versus the $6,000 that 30 $200 gift certificates will cost them.

Folks began Tweeting #squarespace left and right. Congrats… it becomes a rapidly growing trending topic for the $6,000 campaign, but it became more. When people started asking about this hashtag they discovered the fine print and began tweeting about borderline false advertising using SquareSpace’s hashtag. Misleading and deceptive accusations were tweeted about the giveaway using the exact same brand vehicle that was associated with SquareSpace’s campaign. All of this twittering began to trigger spam filters on Twitter. So now negative and positive tweets began to spread like wire fire. In the social web, it is very hard to recover, if even possible, to such a negative wild fire. Further, when your brand vehicle, in this case #squarespace, becomes a spam phrase on Twitter, you have just spent $6k to opt out of the fastest growing social network on the web. Wise?

This last week Moonfruit, a competitor, learned from these mistakes and capitalized on the lessons learned by the #squarespace campaign. Mashable compares these two campaigns here: http://mashable.com/2009/07/01/moonfruit-macbook/

Like the Squarespace promo, Moonfruit is offering up free Apple products for tweeting their company name as a hashtag: #moonfruit. Specifically, they’re giving away 10 MacBook Pro computers in 10 days, as a celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary. Each day, a random user who includes the hashtag will win one, and Moonfruit makes a point to eliminate confusion and say “if you win we’ll deliver your new baby to your door!” Winners are announced via the company’s @moontweet account.

Not surprisingly, this promotion is working. #moonfruit is Twitter’s top trending topic today, beating out the likes of Michael Jackson, #iranelection, and Wimbledon-related tweets. The lesson is becoming pretty clear: free stuff works as well on Twitter (and perhaps even better thanks to Trending Topics) as on the rest of the Web.

The difference is, be clear and honest with the campaign. Moonfruit’s $15,000 week long campaign has successfully lead to nearly all positive tweets associated with this brand vehicle. Sure, the campaign is more expensive, but they also are getting great user generated content outside of the Twitter universe.

Here is an example of authentic positive blogging from our friend’s PaigeIam blog:

Twitter is where I saw it first.

Twitter is where I hashtag it.

MOONFRUIT is where I can build beautful simple websites.

MOONFRUIT is where I can win a free MacBook pro.

So Im going to nom away on some #moonfruit and out eat everyone hashtagin’ it on Twitter

As well as 100’s more on the blogosphere: http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=moonfruit&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tab=nb

This is proof that trending campaigns do peculate from Twitter to the entire social web.

The most amazing thing about this is that the trend is about how real and honest the campaign is; most twitteres do not have brand loyalty or even really know about Moonfruit. However, Moonfruit has created marketers who are saying positive things about your it brand by being honest about the campaign specifics. Who knows these people might actually take the time to click on Moonfruit’s website.

Simply put, honesty and integrity results in respect and the ability to create marketers for you on the social web.

This is a word of mouth win.

June 19, 2009

Another Social Media Win – 12seconds Video Contest

By Kevin Spidel

World renowned photographer Jose Villa offered a scholarship to his photography workshops in Tuscany, Italy to the winner of his 12Seconds competition.

12Seconds.TV is one of the most popular video messaging sites on the web and also good friends of the ActivatingWOM team.

The video contest received over 4700 votes. Online word of mouth actions such as ReTweets, submissions, and advertising of each artists’ submission drove new views to Jose’s website and piqued interests of many who had not previously known about his workshops.

Jose also created a twitter account and actively engaged in conversations: http://twitter.com/ItalyWorkshop

The submitted videos demonstrated artistic talents from around the world and exposed artists’ works to the social web. The bonus was that by using 12seconds.tv the contest was interactive with the artist, kept the attention span of new viewers, and was entertaining.

Here are the top picks: http://josevilla.bigfolioblog.com/weblog/post/110789

And the winner:

shiz-what? on 12seconds.tv

By engaging his online audience to produce their own content about his workshops, Jose not only won over new fans, but received more creditable word of mouth advertising than if he had worked through traditional firms, which would have required a large budget for less return.

This is authentic word of mouth marketing on the web. It is a social media win!

June 17, 2009

On the Social Web, Respect – Not Numbers, Matter

By Kevin Spidel

People often look at the number of followers/fans of others’ online networks as a way to evaluate the network’s influence. In the beginning…numbers mattered on the social web; however, we have evolved and are now entering a social web Renaissance where the number of engaged followers matter. Engagement is measured by followers’/fans’ responses to your content.

On social network sites such as YouTube and Flickr, where the content is the central piece of the conversation, view counts are still relevant. Yet, with networks like Facebook and Twitter (the two largest growing networks) the central content focus is the conversation.

So those of you reading this blog who are not already faithful followers of our writings, we will once again reiterate the importance of authentic conversations on the social web. Since social networks revolve around conversation, authentic engagement is a must! The culture of Twitter and Facebook is very open and welcoming; however, if you begin even the slightest spam, repeating, mass messaging technique versus real engagement, these networks are very unforgiving. Users can block your content with a click of a button; forever shutting you out of their content stream. You have one chance to capture social network users in a positive manner, so make a positive splash on the social web and engage authentically.

How?

Social network users are real people, real potential customers or fans of you. They are online to connect to like minded folks. Brands do not engage, people do! Remember that you are an individual who is talking about a brand. Be human first.

In the latest blog post from Social Media Marketing UK they talk about the social web replacing corporate CRM software because of the authentic real and accessible value of the social web: (link here.)

What impact will this have on you and your company?

If you approach social web engagement as a numbers game, you will fail. If you approach it as building your name identification and engaging into a larger community, you will win. Don’t focus on the numbers. Why, you ask? Here is an example of authentic respect on the social web versus quantity of fans. Let’s take a look at the ever so popular actor Aston Kutcher’s influence on Twitter.

As of 6/16/2009 he has 2,212,447 followers; one of the largest, if not the largest, following on Twitter. Is that influential? Possibly…but let’s really look at the numbers.

• In the last 24 hours Ashton had 300 ReTweets (Fans who replicated what he was saying verbatim) – That is approximately .013% of his network.

• His last TwitPic (photo posted live from his mobile device to Twitter) received 44,235 views. That is approximately 1.9% of his network.

Sure the numbers are there, but is he an influencer to his network? We argue no. He is not engaging in even 3% of his network. The value of having over 2 million followers is diminished if less than 5% of those followers do not actually engage and respond to your content.

From an athlete’s sponsor or a brand associated with a personality do these numbers (eyes) matter as much as the interactions of those who listen, ReTweet and evangelize content from a strong network? No.

Sponsors, brands, and those who want to really impact the social web care about strength in the network. This is something you can’t fake. You can’t buy billboards and ask folks to “follow you on Twitter” as Ashton did and expect quality network. You must engage naturally and earn your network’s respect. We are here to help coach you in that process.

Below is an example of a strong network. Let’s stay within the celeb world since we picked on Ashton’s network and take a look at actress Alyssa Milano.

Alyssa_Milano has 89,225 followers but is an active Twitterer.

• She has over 350 ReTweets in the last 24 hours that is approximately .39% of her network.

Although she has significantly less followers then Ashton; she has nearly the same return on ReTweets.

Imagine if her numbers were double and she still actively engaged on Twitter in her naturally authentic way. Her influence level would be double Ashton’s with far less followship.

Let’s take a look at her last twitpics:

• One received 5,362 views, which is approximately 6% of her network.
• The other received 4,782 views, which is approximately 5.35% of her network.

The best part about these two photographs is that they were taken by her fans, of her fans, wearing HER jeans in a place she loves to spend time (a baseball park.) She merely ReTweeted what her fans did and earned them nearly 10 thousand in views. This is true engagement!

Photos here: http://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/2171411248
http://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/2171383587

What is the difference between these two celebs? Alyssa is actively engaging in conversations with her fans rather then using Twitter as a megaphone.

On the social web, it is about respect and authenticity of your networks… not numbers.

June 12, 2009

Your Customers Are Talking About You – Why Aren't You Talking To them?

By Jennifer Kindred

Last week Kevin and I spent several days in the Bay Area. The trip was a professional and personal success for both of us; we met and interacted with amazing people all over the Bay Area, particularly in Santa Cruz. I could go on and on about our trip, but then would miss the point of this blog entry, which is utilizing the social web in our everyday lives.
On our last day in San Francisco we had a meeting with a potential client who suggested we go to lunch and that I pick the place. Hmmm, I’m a Chicago gal, not so familiar with San Francisco, so my first instinct was to go to Yelp.com. Yelp is a great resource for reviews of almost anything, including restaurants. The site not only gives you information about the restaurant but provides reviews from people who have eaten at the restaurant. This is word of mouth in its purest form on the web.

I thought about the power the reviewers had over a restaurant’s business and my choice. I personally do not put 100% stock in other people’s opinions but in a world of infinite choices, others opinions do provide guide posts. Quite honestly, I am much more apt to bypass a restaurant if there are several bad reviews on a site like yelp.

Sites like Yelp are a PR agencies worst nightmare…no control over the reviews. However, that is because traditional and Web 2 types do not understand how to engage and use both good and bad reviews that are found on the social web. Bad reviews are often the most valuable pieces of information that a business such as a restaurant can find. If a restaurant contacted the reviewer and engaged in real conversation about the bad review and then offered to compensate them for having a bad experience at their restaurant; the restaurant would have just taken a negative impression and turned into a positive interaction with a customer.

Word of mouth marketing gives power to the consumer but also allows the business to find out exactly how their product/service is being perceived and consumed. A major part of Activating WOM is to track semantic conversations about our client’s service/product. In a world full of choices make sure you are engaging your customers in a meaningful way.

The next time you are in a new city and rely on the social web to navigate restaurant choices, remember to provide meaningful reviews about your experiences. Empower yourself through Web 3!

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